


Ink and Paper

by TenTomatoes



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, Not A Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 07:34:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7835818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenTomatoes/pseuds/TenTomatoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took 80 years for Bilbo Baggins to finish the story of his adventure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ink and Paper

One year after Bilbo makes it back to his empty Hobbit hole he picks up a pen. He lays out his paper and ink and takes a deep breath. He puts the pen down and throws the paper away.

 

A year and a half after Bilbo buys back all the things he finds that no longer have meaning to him, he picks up his pen. He stares at the paper as a steady mantra flows through his head. Just write his name. Just his name and the worst part will be over. Just write his name.

His hands shakes as he slowly sets the pen against the paper.

Just write his name. It’s not that hard. Just write his name.

_T._ _H. O_ .

He makes it only half way through before the dull ache of his heart flares up and he wants nothing more than to claw it out of his chest, still raw, red, and beating.

Just write his name.

_R._

The letters begin to blur beneath him but he doesn’t wipe his eyes. He thinks if he can’t see them it will be easier.

_I._

The tears slide down, clearing his vision for a second before they’re replaced by new ones. His hands still quiver against the paper, leaving ink smeared against the paper.

Just write his name.

He lifts his hand for the last letter.

_N._

The pen drops from his hand, clattering against the desk and rolling away. What was written is lost beneath the smudges of tears and his jerking hand. Bilbo still stares at it until he is numb.

The worst part is not over.

 

Balin told him they would live on in great tales passed down through generations. He wonders if he will be in any of them. He wonders if they will tell the truth. He hopes they will not.

 

He waits a year before he tries again. He waits until the sun is bright and his flowers are in full bloom. He takes his paper and pen and finds a nice clear spot in his garden, sitting down with a few biscuits at hand.  He forces a smile on his face and he has become so good at those it almost feels real.

He tries a different approach. He starts from the beginning.

_There once was a Hobbit who lived all alone in a hole._

He reads it over and there’s a sudden strike to his chest.

There still is a Hobbit who lives all alone in a hole.

Bilbo always thought adventures were supposed to end differently than they began. A kingdom in trouble ends in harmony. A hero who’s weak ends becoming strong. A Hobbit who was alone ends no longer being lonely.

He didn’t understand why his adventure ended up so wrong. He picks up his pen and crosses the words out with heavy strokes.   

_There once was a Hobbit who lived in a hole._

Though the words are hidden behind black ink, he’s sure he can still read them. He shakes his head and moves on, writing a happy little section about his beloved Hobbit hole, ignoring the words that are carving themselves into his heart.   

  _ ~~All alone~~_

 

One day he sits in his pantry and he drinks. He drinks more than he has even done before. He hits the point where the world feel soft and rose colored but he keeps drinking. He drinks until the world begins the spin and twist before his eyes but he doesn’t stop. He drinks until everything is numb and he can think about Thorin without hurt paralyzing him and he pours himself another glass. He drinks until he can barely remember why he is crying but he knows he doesn’t want to remember again. He drinks until everything is dark.

The next morning Bilbo wakes up head pounding and mouth sour. He blearily pushes himself up from where he is slumped and it takes him several minutes to realize he is no longer in the pantry. It’s much too bright. He squints against the light and he feels papers rustle against his fingers.

He’s in his study, he realizes. He looks down at his desk and freezes. There are papers strewn across it, wrinkled and ripped, and his ink bottle has tipped, it slid across his desk dripping down onto the floor in a dark puddle. He feels his heart drop into his stomach when he sees the paper has been written on in shaking and messy handwriting.

He picks them up before he loses courage.

He reads only the first scrawling message before he throws them all in the smoldering ashes of the fire place.

The next time he drinks he locks his pen and paper away.

 

He makes them both blond.

He doesn’t know why he does it but he does. It helps when he twists the small things, the insignificant things. If he changes it just enough it’s almost as though it never happened. He can look at it as though it’s just another silly story he made up one day.

He wants to describe the terrified look Kili had on his face when his front door was throw open and how Fili sauntered into his house as though he owned it, piling his numerous knives into Bilbo’s confused arms. He wants to write the bright way Kili asked for Mr. Boggins and how they teasingly called to him that way when they wanted to be funny.

He doesn’t because he can’t find the right words.

Instead he makes them blond, lets them bow, and he doesn’t speak of them again. 

 

It’s been 10 years since he bowed his head against the sharp, cold, stone and sobbed until his throat was sore when he finally picks up his pen. He writes Thorin’s name quickly and smoothly, the dull ache has become normal over the years and it barley even flares as he reads it again.

He decided its time to write about him. He’s pushed it off longer than he should have. He looks at the empty paper and racks his mind for all he could say and he finds both too much and nothing at all.

He wants to write about his eyes. How clear and blue and sharp and intelligent they were and how dull they became as the life drained from them. He wants to write about his voice; how he sang that night they came to his Hobbit hole and stirred something deep in Bilbo’s heart that he ended up chasing half way across the earth. He wants to write of the way he smiled at him, only him, soft and private. He wants to write of all the emotions he made him feel, from irritation to shame to respect to love to sorrow. But it was all too much. Too impossible to get down on paper.

Instead he ends up with a single line of 3 words.      

_I love him._

He thinks of the love poems he use to write, how they flowed with imagery and flowers, sweet declarations and desperate pleas that sang of heartache.

He didn’t know about love back then, not like he knows now, and he decides there is nothing more lovely than those words spelled out plainly and open for all to see.           

There is also nothing more horrible, he decides when he realizes he didn’t use the past tense.

He takes the paper and folds it in fourths and places it against his heart. He wonders if he will ever be able to use the past tense. He wonders if that day comes the pain will stop.

The answer is no for both.

 

Frodo is much too old for bed time stories but because Bilbo has such interesting ones to tell, he still asks. Bilbo enjoys telling stories as much as Frodo loves hearing them so he never refuses.

“What story are you going to tell me tonight?” Frodo asks excitedly, buried under his blankets. 

“Well, what sort of story would you like?” Bilbo chuckles.

“One with a lot of adventure,” he says thoughtfully. “And romance too.”

Adventure and romance. The grin on Bilbo’s face freezes. There is a stirring in his chest and before he knows it he is opening his mouth to speak.  

“Here’s a nice story about an exiled Dwarf King and his Hobbit,” Bilbo says.

He speaks without pause, knowing if he hesitates he wouldn’t be able to finish. He skips parts, yet he tells the story in a more complete way than he has ever managed to in his book. He goes through every look and smile and talk, detailing how two people with such differences and such low opinions of each other slowly came to trust and then love. He losses himself in the sweet memories.

And then he comes to the battle and he finds himself stuck. 

“What happened in the end Uncle?” Frodo mumbles, struggling to stay conscious having followed the story with wide eyes.

Bilbo pauses briefly. He can’t tell the truth, he realizes. He can’t shatter Frodo’s young heart with the truth of adventures: that they don’t all end in victory and love; that you can kill the dragon and save the day but you’ll still loose what was really important.

Instead he says something else, something he knows is utterly senseless and masochistic, but the words tumble out before he can stop himself.

“The Dwarf King then takes back his kingdom, making peace with all those he wronged and who wronged him. He rules over his kingdom for many, many years with his trusted Hobbit by his side. Finally when his nephew is old enough he hands the crown over to him, where he proceeds to become a beloved and just king. The now ex-Dwarf king then follows his Hobbit on a great adventure back to the Shire where they live together until they reach a ripe old age.”

Frodo yawns and buries his face into his pillow.

“That’s a nice story Uncle.” He mutters.

“It is, my lad. It really is.”

Bilbo whispers good night but Frodo is already fast asleep so he inches out of his room. He walks past his writing desk and the snack he had left out for himself and instead he drops himself onto his bed burying his face in his hands.

Damn.

It was such a nice story.

He wishes he had never told it.

 

80 years after he watches the only one he had ever loved be buried beneath stone as cold as he was, Bilbo closes the finished manuscript. It is the worst story he has ever written. It is detached and cold, written as though by someone who watched it happen from the outside.

He claims it is the true story but it is a sliver of it, a shade of the truth. He left the most important parts out but he does not regret it.

His mother had told him when he was young as she had gifted him with his first journal that writing is a way to make your heart lighter, but he found that he did not want to make his heart light. Bilbo is afraid to write it down, that if the words left him the pain would go with it. He has lived so long with the pain and love, that they have become one in the same. He fears that if the ache were to leave so would the last of his love. He can not imagine the emptiness that would bring  

It will be a wonderful story for others to read. Mothers will tell their children the story of brave Dwarves and dragons and young people will sigh wistfully for the same kind of adventure and some will even morn themselves when they close the last page of the story, but that is all they will be reading. A story.   

The truth will stay weighed on his heart, painful and heavy but exactly where it is meant to be. 

**Author's Note:**

> A little piece of angst I wrote when I should have been finishing Communication. This was created based on the ridiculous idea of Bilbo writing an every body lives au and turned into this sad thing.


End file.
